


Love and Bearclaws

by Edie_Rone



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, early early MSR, like before they even know themselves, who among us has not done the same
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-26 23:41:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20398072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edie_Rone/pseuds/Edie_Rone
Summary: Scully’s verbal typo reveals a deeper truth.Written for the four word prompts: "Alright, I love you"





	Love and Bearclaws

Scully has spent a large part of the last three years avoiding death, but right now — she actively yearns for the Reaper to get here before Mulder does.

“…I’m already on my way — flight leaves at 6:40 so I’ll be by in about ten minutes to pick you up. I’ve got coffee and bear claws,” he’d added, by way of apology for the early hour and extremely late notice. Once upon a time, this might’ve thrown her for a loop, but she’s a pro at traveling Mulder Air by now, so she’d just nodded, phone held against her ear with one shoulder as she tossed a few sets of bras and underwear into her open suitcase.

“Alright, I love you.” She pushes the end call button, and swears she’s entered a time warp: It feels like great empires have millennia to rise and fall in the three seconds between those words coming out of her mouth, and the realization of what she’s done.

“Fuck,” she says softly, staring at the stupid phone. Then, louder and more forcefully: “FUCK.” She would rather have said that to Walter Fucking Skinner than to Mulder — she’s just added pages more to his mental profile of her. She hates that he does that — it’s a verbal typo, for god’s sake, not a declaration of … and anyway she hasn’t even had coffee yet, she can’t possibly be held responsible for — 

The damn phone rings in her hand. His number. He’s basically a junior-high boy — he’ll never let her live this down.

She goes on the offensive, stabbing the answer button: “OK, listen — it’s 4:58 a.m., I barely know what day it is, I’m pulling suits out of dry-cleaning bags without even checking whether they’re navy or black, and you —”

“I love you too, you know,” he says, his voice positively bursting with amusement — but underneath it, a fine strong thread of sweet sincerity. He’s disarmed her, wrong-footed her again, but this once, it’s ok. A few seconds of silence lie between them.

“Well. I’m glad we’ve established that,” she rallies to reply evenly, glad he’s not here to see how flustered she still is. But of course, being Mulder, he can’t resist an opportunity to give her a hard time.

“They do say a law enforcement partnership is like a marriage. You want me to see if we can rustle up a Justice of the Peace once we get there? Or do you wanna wait till we get back, get a priest to do it properly — ”

“Oh, go marry Bigfoot,” she snorts. “I’ll be the flower girl.” She hangs up, grateful that he’s let her off that easy. Two minutes later, she hears a honk from outside; she zips her case, checks the lights, the oven, and the locks, and heads out into the grey dawn to chase another monster with a man who — she’s beginning, deep down, to realize — has loved her some way or another all along.


End file.
